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How can some people exploit basic income system to "rob us"? Maybe they can fabricate people which don't actually exist? (Or more realistically, delay reporting

by sanxiyn 10y ago

How can some people exploit basic income system to "rob us"? Maybe they can fabricate people which don't actually exist? (Or more realistically, delay reporting death to collect basic income of dead people.) These are concerns, but hopefully modern government can deal with fake identities. These still seem a lot better than current welfare system. If you consider giving basic income to people who spend $500 on weed "robbing", well you are entitled to your opinion, but that's not exploit of system, because system is working as intended.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
People exploit basic income to rob us when they consume it without needing it. Why do you think having zero oversight and giving benefits to everyone, including those who don't need it, is somehow better than the current system? If you consider giving basic income to people who spend $500 on weed "robbing", well you are entitled to your opinion, but that's not exploit of system, because system is working as intended. Yes, it's pretty clear that the goal is to create a vote bank of government dependents who exploit the rest of us.
- akmiller 10y ago
  Many reasons to this and something has to change at some point. But just a couple of points is that if everyone receives it then nobody can be robbing the system as everyone is entitled to it. Another point that the HN crew should be well aware of is that we are going to see entire Industries worth of jobs disappear. Obviously other jobs will come but not at the rate they are going to decline and they will likely be more high skilled jobs than low one's. We are on the cusp of automated vehicles and when that comes to fruition all cab/taxi/bus/truck drivers will be without jobs. This will happen in many other areas as well and to not seriously prepare for this type of future is absolute lunacy. Not saying that BI is THE answer...but it, along with many other things, are definitely worth exploring further.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Yes, and if I do this: try: ... except Exception, e: return 200, "ok" then I've completely eliminated the problem of 500 Internal Server Error. Just because you redefine taking money you don't need from productive people as "entitled" doesn't make the problem go away.
  - gwright 10y ago
    > Obviously other jobs will come but not at the rate they are going to decline and they will likely be more high skilled jobs than low one's. I see this argument a lot lately, but it isn't clear to me why we should have any confidence in this type of speculation. Even if it this generally turns out to be true, what are the second-order effects of such a radical change to the job market? How will people adapt? What new opportunities will arise?
- someguydave 10y ago
  >Yes, it's pretty clear that the goal is to create a vote bank of government dependents who exploit the rest of us. There's a simple solution that all BI advocates should embrace: you take BI money and you give up your vote, because it is a conflict of interest.
  - douche 10y ago
    It'll be a cold day in hell before that idea flies. But how do you balance the mob voting themselves bread and circuses, against the wealthy voting to let the mob starve? I think I still like the Starship Troopers, "Service guarantees Citizenship" model better.
    - someguydave 10y ago
      >I think I still like the Starship Troopers, "Service guarantees Citizenship" model better. Agreed, sign me up. Power should always be balanced with direct responsibility. If you want to vote for the government to do something, you better be able to pay in blood or treasure to see it done.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    It's not a conflict of interest any more than accepting any other public service, like fire protection, is.
    - someguydave 10y ago
      >It's not a conflict of interest any more than accepting any other public service, like fire protection, is. You are correct, voting for a public service while being unwilling or unable to pay for the service is a fundamental conflict of interest. You ought not be able to vote if you aren't able to pay for the policy.
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        Everyone in society pays for all the benefits of organized society by bong subject to the law; each is entitled, in return, to participate in deciding what the law is. There is no "conflict" involved in any case. "Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens, it isn't even a coherent concept to acting on one's own behalf as a citizen, where there is only one interest, one's own, being represented, and thus no opportunity for a conflict. You may be abusing the term to mean a conflict between your interests and those of other citizens, but every citizen would have that kind of conflict, and that's what equal participation exists to resolve (and not what conflict of interest means.)
Applejinx 10y ago
Absolutely. If you don't like it, sell them weed and then you have their $500. It always boggles my mind how many people would rather see the system grind to a halt, rather than anybody naughty be consuming. I would much rather see a class of people with disposable income.
- jimmyk 10y ago
  Absolutely. If you don't like it, sell them weed and then you have their $500. Except now, you've used your time and resources to produce weed instead of other goods and services. The people who would have used that $500 to buy those other goods and services will subsequently have a lower standard of living. If someone steals $5k from me and uses that $5k to buy my car, am I just as well off as I was before because I still have my $5k?
pkaye 10y ago
The problems would be that the real implementation of basic income will never be as simple as proposed. We would start out by saying every adult will get a fixed amount. Then the question comes out about people with disabilities needing extra money for their care. So we carve out an exception. Then what about parents who squander the money and the detrimental effects on their kids. Do we let the kids starve? What about kids in foster care? What if parents have lots of kids? Should kids also get a basic income? As we add more and more exceptions there are more opportunities for abuse of the system.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > The problems would be that the real implementation of basic income will never be as simple as proposed. We would start out by saying every adult will get a fixed amount. Then the question comes out about people with disabilities needing extra money for their care. So we carve out an exception. Or, more likely, we don't include disability programs (which are not purely or primarily means-tested programs) as among the primarily-means-tested programs that are replaced by UBI in the first place. To the extent that improvements are needed in disability programs, they come from elsewhere. (OTOH, part of the problem creating incentive for disability fraud is secondary testing in primarily means-tested benefit programs, which leaves lots of gaps in basic poverty support.) > What about parents who squander the money and the detrimental effects on their kids. Do we let the kids starve? We deal with child neglect through child welfare systems, not social benefit systems. > What about kids in foster care? What about them? > What if parents have lots of kids? Then...they have lots of kids. > Should kids also get a basic income? Pretty obviously, yes, kids should get basic income (if nothing else, most of the primarily means-tested social benefit programs -- both welfare and EITC -- in the country are support programs for parents with dependent children that are strongly scaled by the number of dependent children, so if you want a system that does at least as good for current targets of benefits while removing the adverse effects, the obvious methods is that kids should be included as beneficiaries. There are a few programs that are not targeting such families -- e.g., General Assistance programs, but they are small both in their per-beneficiary benefits and their aggregate costs as a share of overall social welfare spending.) The most sensible way to do a UBI is probably "all citizens and legal permanent residents". > As we add more and more exceptions there are more opportunities for abuse of the system. The whole point of the "U" in UBI is that you don't add exceptions. You define a broad universe of recipients with as few qualifications as you can sensibly make, and everyone within that universe gets the same benefit.

by sanxiyn 10y ago

yummyfajitas 10y ago

People exploit basic income to rob us when they consume it without needing it. Why do you think having zero oversight and giving benefits to everyone, including those who don't need it, is somehow better than the current system? If you consider giving basic income to people who spend $500 on weed "robbing", well you are entitled to your opinion, but that's not exploit of system, because system is working as intended. Yes, it's pretty clear that the goal is to create a vote bank of government dependents who exploit the rest of us.

akmiller 10y ago
Many reasons to this and something has to change at some point. But just a couple of points is that if everyone receives it then nobody can be robbing the system as everyone is entitled to it. Another point that the HN crew should be well aware of is that we are going to see entire Industries worth of jobs disappear. Obviously other jobs will come but not at the rate they are going to decline and they will likely be more high skilled jobs than low one's. We are on the cusp of automated vehicles and when that comes to fruition all cab/taxi/bus/truck drivers will be without jobs. This will happen in many other areas as well and to not seriously prepare for this type of future is absolute lunacy. Not saying that BI is THE answer...but it, along with many other things, are definitely worth exploring further.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Yes, and if I do this: try: ... except Exception, e: return 200, "ok" then I've completely eliminated the problem of 500 Internal Server Error. Just because you redefine taking money you don't need from productive people as "entitled" doesn't make the problem go away.
- gwright 10y ago
  > Obviously other jobs will come but not at the rate they are going to decline and they will likely be more high skilled jobs than low one's. I see this argument a lot lately, but it isn't clear to me why we should have any confidence in this type of speculation. Even if it this generally turns out to be true, what are the second-order effects of such a radical change to the job market? How will people adapt? What new opportunities will arise?
someguydave 10y ago
>Yes, it's pretty clear that the goal is to create a vote bank of government dependents who exploit the rest of us. There's a simple solution that all BI advocates should embrace: you take BI money and you give up your vote, because it is a conflict of interest.
- douche 10y ago
  It'll be a cold day in hell before that idea flies. But how do you balance the mob voting themselves bread and circuses, against the wealthy voting to let the mob starve? I think I still like the Starship Troopers, "Service guarantees Citizenship" model better.
  - someguydave 10y ago
    >I think I still like the Starship Troopers, "Service guarantees Citizenship" model better. Agreed, sign me up. Power should always be balanced with direct responsibility. If you want to vote for the government to do something, you better be able to pay in blood or treasure to see it done.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  It's not a conflict of interest any more than accepting any other public service, like fire protection, is.
  - someguydave 10y ago
    >It's not a conflict of interest any more than accepting any other public service, like fire protection, is. You are correct, voting for a public service while being unwilling or unable to pay for the service is a fundamental conflict of interest. You ought not be able to vote if you aren't able to pay for the policy.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      Everyone in society pays for all the benefits of organized society by bong subject to the law; each is entitled, in return, to participate in deciding what the law is. There is no "conflict" involved in any case. "Conflict of interest" in lawmaking is a concept which only applies to people to whom additional authority beyond that of citizen of granted to act as an agent of other citizens, it isn't even a coherent concept to acting on one's own behalf as a citizen, where there is only one interest, one's own, being represented, and thus no opportunity for a conflict. You may be abusing the term to mean a conflict between your interests and those of other citizens, but every citizen would have that kind of conflict, and that's what equal participation exists to resolve (and not what conflict of interest means.)

Applejinx 10y ago

Absolutely. If you don't like it, sell them weed and then you have their $500. It always boggles my mind how many people would rather see the system grind to a halt, rather than anybody naughty be consuming. I would much rather see a class of people with disposable income.

jimmyk 10y ago
Absolutely. If you don't like it, sell them weed and then you have their $500. Except now, you've used your time and resources to produce weed instead of other goods and services. The people who would have used that $500 to buy those other goods and services will subsequently have a lower standard of living. If someone steals $5k from me and uses that $5k to buy my car, am I just as well off as I was before because I still have my $5k?

pkaye 10y ago

The problems would be that the real implementation of basic income will never be as simple as proposed. We would start out by saying every adult will get a fixed amount. Then the question comes out about people with disabilities needing extra money for their care. So we carve out an exception. Then what about parents who squander the money and the detrimental effects on their kids. Do we let the kids starve? What about kids in foster care? What if parents have lots of kids? Should kids also get a basic income? As we add more and more exceptions there are more opportunities for abuse of the system.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> The problems would be that the real implementation of basic income will never be as simple as proposed. We would start out by saying every adult will get a fixed amount. Then the question comes out about people with disabilities needing extra money for their care. So we carve out an exception. Or, more likely, we don't include disability programs (which are not purely or primarily means-tested programs) as among the primarily-means-tested programs that are replaced by UBI in the first place. To the extent that improvements are needed in disability programs, they come from elsewhere. (OTOH, part of the problem creating incentive for disability fraud is secondary testing in primarily means-tested benefit programs, which leaves lots of gaps in basic poverty support.) > What about parents who squander the money and the detrimental effects on their kids. Do we let the kids starve? We deal with child neglect through child welfare systems, not social benefit systems. > What about kids in foster care? What about them? > What if parents have lots of kids? Then...they have lots of kids. > Should kids also get a basic income? Pretty obviously, yes, kids should get basic income (if nothing else, most of the primarily means-tested social benefit programs -- both welfare and EITC -- in the country are support programs for parents with dependent children that are strongly scaled by the number of dependent children, so if you want a system that does at least as good for current targets of benefits while removing the adverse effects, the obvious methods is that kids should be included as beneficiaries. There are a few programs that are not targeting such families -- e.g., General Assistance programs, but they are small both in their per-beneficiary benefits and their aggregate costs as a share of overall social welfare spending.) The most sensible way to do a UBI is probably "all citizens and legal permanent residents". > As we add more and more exceptions there are more opportunities for abuse of the system. The whole point of the "U" in UBI is that you don't add exceptions. You define a broad universe of recipients with as few qualifications as you can sensibly make, and everyone within that universe gets the same benefit.